


con campanas, con relojes, con árboles

by Chash



Series: todo lo que me pasa [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Compliant, F/M, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 05 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 10:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14470431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: Bellamy Blake wakes up in another world.





	con campanas, con relojes, con árboles

**Author's Note:**

> I realized if I didn't write this before Tuesday I'd have more canon to worry about, so establishing my own version of events now, to get that out of the way.
> 
> Speaking of getting things out of the way: this is season five complaint, so there are references to Becho. They have already broken up by the time this fic starts. Please do not use the comments on this fic to tell me how you feel about either Echo or Becho.
> 
> Title is still from Neruda: "with bells, with clocks, with trees."

Bellamy wakes with the uncomfortable feeling of having slept too late, disoriented and confused. It hasn’t been a problem in the last few days of being on Earth—they've been sleeping outside and the sunrise tends to wake him—but the conversation with Echo kept him up late, and it’s been a stressful, exhausting few days. He deserved to sleep in.

It’s then that the other strange things begin to penetrate his sleep-fogged brain. He’s sleeping on a mattress, to start with, a nice one, and his left arm is asleep because it’s under another person.

His eyes fly open, cheeks heating up. There’s no way he found a hook up after he and his girlfriend broke up, he’s not that guy, but—

But there’s a blonde in bed next to him. So he must have staggered into—somewhere with beds? With some woman he doesn’t know, and—

It’s not adding up. It’s not as if he was drunk, he couldn’t have forgotten this. Someone would have had to drug him. 

He gets his arm out from under the woman, and she curls away from him with a sleepy noise of protest. There’s something familiar in the sound, and he tries to place it from last night, but his brain is still running slow.

Then she rolls over to face him, and he falls off the bed.

The shock of impact against the floor is enough to convince him it’s not a dream—dreams don’t _hurt_ —and there’s no pain in the City of Light either. Pain means it’s real, and real means—

“Wow,” says Clarke, peering over the side of the bed. “That was something.”

“Clarke,” he manages. It’s been so long, he would have said he forgot the details of her face, but it’s more like they were dormant. Now it all bursts into focus, the blue of her eyes and the mole on her lip and _this_ and _this_ and _this_.

She looks so perfect.

Her eyes narrow. “What’s wrong?”

The fact that she sees nothing wrong with this situation has alarm bells ringing in his head. Not that they weren’t before, of course. It’s a trick; it has to be a trick. Clarke died in Praimfaya. She can’t be here.

Wherever “here” is.

“Nothing,” he says. “Bad dream.” He stands and stretches, covertly scoping out his surroundings. They’re in a bedroom, about twice as large as the rooms on the Ark, neat and styled like something from the late twentieth or early twenty-first century. There’s light streaming in through big windows and the air smells clean and fresh, nothing like the wasteland surrounding the bunker.

Clarke rolls out of bed and stretches herself. Neither of them is wearing much—underwear for him and a shirt for her—and when she raises her arms, the hem rises enough that he can see the bottom edge of her underwear too.

He is, at least, currently technically single. Even if he’s not sure it’s going to last, he’s not the worst person in the world.

But he still cuts his eyes away.

“So, we want to do groceries this morning, right?” says Clarke. “Since we didn’t yesterday.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, and has to look away again when she pulls off her shirt and there’s nothing under it but smooth skin and breasts.

That’s going to be what he sees when he closes his eyes for a while.

He hears more than sees her crossing the room, and he lets himself glance over at her getting dressed, which should probably be his next step too. There’s no other likely-looking furniture, but the closed door against the wall is probably a closet.

Opening it is risky, could tip off the strange Clarke that something is wrong, but so will standing here doing nothing; he doesn’t have a lot of great options.

When he opens the closet, it’s definitely not his clothing, all dresses and blouses and shoes, and of course Clarke is watching him suspiciously when he turns back around.

“Just—“ he starts, without any plan where it’s going.

“Where did we meet?” she asks.

“What?”

“Where did we meet?”

He swallows hard, scrambling for a guess. He could tell her the truth, of course, but whoever this is, she’s not the Clarke Griffin he met on the dropship six years ago.

For one thing, that Clarke is dead. This is some impostor, and she’s already onto him.

“You’re the other Bellamy, right?” she says, before he comes up with anything.

“The what?”

Clarke nods, like this is answer enough. “The one from the post-apocalypse. Are you still in space?”

He feels like he’s five steps behind, which is unfair. Maybe this is some advanced interrogation technique the other ship has, some kind of virtual reality. They pulled Clarke’s memory from deep inside him, and they’re using it against him.

“I’m obviously not in space,” he says. “Are you okay?”

Clarke bites the corner of her mouth, like she’s trying to figure out her next move. “Not as sure about my mental stability as I was three days ago, but I’ve got a boyfriend now, so that’s cool. You want clothes? They’re still in your room. And you should put these on”

He accepts the pair of glasses, blinks as the world comes into a much sharper focus than he's used to. Clarke is still watching him, expression unreadable, and he _is_ getting kind of cold.

He doesn't have any better ideas, either. “Clothes would be good.”

“Come on.” She leads him out of the room and into the larger apartment, down a hall to another door. This room is painted darker, messier and full of bookshelves. There’s a desk with a picture on it, and his heart twists when he picks it up: Octavia, with Lincoln, showing off a bright ring on her left hand.

That’s what gets him, somehow. He whirls on the girl. “What the fuck is this?”

The impostor Clarke is cool, unruffled. “From what we can tell? An alternate reality. The same thing happened to me the day before yesterday. I woke up, and I was your Clarke.”

“My Clarke is dead!” he snaps.

She doesn’t even blink. “No, she isn’t. The nightblood saved her. She lived through Praimfaya.”

His heart stops for a second, and he thinks he might faint or vomit. He hadn’t ever thought it might be possible. Even if she could survive the radiation, he’s been sure the fire itself would get her.

“How do you know?” he asks, voice cracking on the question. The bunker never opened, not until Raven and Monty opened it. She would have been alone for six years.

But she’d be alive.

“Because we switched. She spent the day watching Netflix with my Bellamy, and I spent the day with an alternate universe version of a girl I know from work, trying not to get killed. You should still get dressed. Not that I mind the view, but you’re not technically my boyfriend.”

He opens up the dresser and finds a shirt to pull on. “Technically?”

Clarke—whatever Clarke this is supposed to be—leans against the door frame, arms crossed over her chest. “I’m pretty sure my Bellamy is wherever you were. Space?”

He shakes his head; he's too rattled to lie, and it's not like that's a secret, anyway. “No, we came down. About a week ago.”

“But you haven’t seen your Clarke.”

“We've been at the bunker.”

“Madi said the bunker was buried. She and Clarke couldn’t get to the door to get them out.”

He pulls on jeans too. “Yeah, it took us a while. Who’s Madi?”

“Another nightblood. Clarke found her a few months after—is it really Praimfaya? Not Prime Fire? Madi said it was another language.”

“Yeah.” He wets his lips. “Why should I believe you? Any of this?”

“Because it’s a really stupid lie. And you’re the one who showed up in my apartment, in my bed, with no idea what was happening. And, like I said, I get it, I woke up in the back of a car. And your Clarke pretty much broke down at the sight of my Bellamy, so—“

He swallows hard. “Broke down?”

“She’s starting to think you’re dead too. That she’s never going to see you again. I think Bellamy spent most of the day hugging her.”

The flare of jealousy is completely unwarranted. He’s never gotten to spend enough time just existing with Clarke, but he’s still not even sure this is _true_. And if it is, he can’t even imagine how much Clarke needed whatever she got. She hasn’t been alone for six years, but it’s close.

He didn’t think he’d left her, not like that. Leaving her alive somehow feels even worse than leaving her dead. The dead don’t feel lonely. Whatever affection she could get, however she could get it--he should be happy about that.

“And you were on the ground,” he says. “With Madi.”

“Yeah. I’m glad it wasn’t more than a day, I'm not sure I would have survived. I got home, Bellamy made sure it was me, and apparently whatever your Clarke said convinced him I was in love with him, so I probably owe her one.”

It's not a surprise that they're together here--he woke up in bed with her, it seemed like the most reasonable explanation--but he hadn't expected it to be recent, or for Clarke to have had anything to do with it.

His Clarke. The Clarke who is, supposedly, alive, somewhere on the ground, with a nightblood girl she found.

"I don't know if I can believe you," he finally says. "I can't--she's been dead for six years. I mourned her."

"If it's like it was for me, you'll be back tomorrow," she says. "And you can see for yourself. She and Madi are in the only patch of green, hiding from some people Madi calls Eligius.”

His jaw works. It’s not like he can fact-check her or anything; everything she’s saying is either true or something that could have been pulled from his head, if this is some kind of trick. If there was one City of Light, there could be more. Just because she knows these things, it doesn't make her story _real_.

“What do you think happened?” he finally asks her. “Why am I here?”

Clarke shrugs. “Maybe you just needed a little hope.”

It’s odd to think he might, because things have been good, the last few days. The thing with Echo was rough, the knowledge that they made sense in space and not on the ground, but even that wasn’t all bad. It was reassuring, that they could end things and know it didn't end _everything_. They're still a family.

But it's been hard, too, and he's been struggling to not miss Clarke. He loves Raven, and Echo, and Monty, everyone from the Ark, but he's never been as good at bouncing ideas off them as he was at bouncing them off Clarke. On the ground, it feels like she should be with him, helping him out.

So maybe a little hope is exactly what he has. He doesn't quite believe it, but--maybe. Maybe this is all somehow true.

He clears his throat. "So, uh, we need to get groceries?" he asks.

"Breakfast first," says Clarke. She claps him on the shoulder. "You're cooking."

*

"What's space like?"

"The food sucks," Bellamy says, and Clarke laughs. "Seriously. Monty was farming algae. It tasted about like you'd expect. It kept us alive, but I've never had an actual fresh chicken egg before in my life."

"Yeah, I could tell from how you cooked it." 

He bumps her hip with his as she hands him a dish to dry. "I thought I did okay for my first try. You were the one who said I was the cook."

"In my world, you are. You used to cook for your sister, growing up."

He swallows hard. "What's she like here?"

"Your sister? She's--complicated."

Her tone is so careful it breaks the knot of tension in his stomach and he laughs. "You don't like her."

"I never said that! It's just--it was tough for you guys. Growing up like you did."

"How was that?"

"Your dad died when you were just a baby, and Octavia's dad didn't want to stick around. You helped your mom out a lot, and then she passed away--"

"Was it my fault?" he asks.

Clarke blinks. "I don't think so. It was before we met, but she had cancer. Was it your fault in your world?"

"How much do you know about it? My world."

"Not a lot, just what Madi and my Bellamy told me, and neither of them were exactly experts. Madi loves Octavia, though."

He frowns at her. "Madi's never met Octavia."

"I--the other Clarke--told her stories about you guys. She showed me pictures that her Clarke drew. She's been waiting for you guys, all this time."

He scrubs his face. "Fuck."

Clarke nudges him. "Stop worrying and tell me about you and Octavia."

"There was a one-child rule on the Ark. My mom was never supposed to have Octavia in the first place, it was illegal."

"So why did she?"

"I don't know," he admits. "I think she probably just--I don't think she wanted to tell anyone it had happened. O's dad was already married, I'm pretty sure my mom was just sleeping with him to get extra rations, which was already illegal. She didn't need to tell them about an illegal kid on top of that."

"So she had the baby."

"Yeah. We hid her for sixteen years, and then I screwed up. I tried to take her to a dance, we got caught, O got thrown in the skybox and Mom got floated."

"Skybox?"

"Jail. And floated is, uh--out the airlock."

"Just for having a kid?" she demands, the raw outrage making him smile in spite of himself.

"If you break any law over eighteen, you get floated. That's the law. Or was, I guess. Once we got to Earth, suddenly every life on our side was precious." He sighs. "Fuck, it was such a fucking mess."

"Madi said you guys did what you had to do to survive. That's what I taught her."

"Yeah? How does that sound to you?"

"I was there for a day and if anyone had tried to hurt Madi, I would have tried to kill them," she says, matter-of-fact. "And that was one day."

"So tell me about Madi."

She smiles. "I thought I was telling you about your sister."

"Her too."

"Your sister's engaged to a great guy, they're going to get married and go on way more hikes than I want to. I like her, but I don't think she appreciates how much you did for her. I get annoyed when I think people don't appreciate you enough. Even when I think you don't appreciate yourself enough."

"Thanks. And Madi?"

"She's a good kid. In both worlds. I didn't get a lot of her background there, but here she's had a lot of bad foster families, and I know she needs some stability. I just have to talk Jackson into okaying it. Which is going to be easier now that we're dating."

"Why?"

"Two-parent households tend to be favored. Also, we wouldn't have to find a new place because she can have your room."

"Yeah? Why my room?" he teases.

"You like mine better. Why do you think we were sleeping in there?"

"Honestly, my brain wasn't really working well enough to come up with a guess. Just that it was some--mean joke."

She cocks her head at him, with this thoughtful, calculating look that reminds him so much of his own Clarke it makes him _ache_.

She has to be alive after this. If he goes back and all this was wrong, he doesn't even fucking know what he's going to do.

"Up until last night, I had a girlfriend," he finds himself telling her.

Clarke turns off the sink, but he's pretty sure it's a coincidence and not some weird, passive-aggressive commentary on his relationship status.

"Anyone I know?"

"It seems like you know everyone. Echo?"

"You dated her here too, yeah."

"What happened?"

"Same thing, you broke up." She shrugs. "It was right before I moved back. I always wondered if it had anything to do with me, but I'e never actually asked. What happened last night? Or--wait."

"Wait?"

"Let's grab bags, you can tell me on the way to the store."

He has to smile. "Sure. I'm kind of excited to see what outside looks like here."

"I guess you wouldn't have seen the green part of your Earth.

"Nope, just the wasteland."

"Well, good news. Here's a lot better."

It’s obvious as soon as they walk outside, from the freshness of the air to the brightness of the leaves. Even the sun feels different. This is a world that hasn’t yet been destroyed, one that still might turn it around. There are birds singing and squirrels in the trees and people walking dogs and riding bikes.

It’s just like he knew it must have been, before. But seeing it is so different.

“So, you and Echo broke up," says Clarke. "Whose idea?”

“Hers. I was—“ He laughs, shakes his head. “I told her nothing was going to change, so obviously I wasn’t going to be the one to end it after that.”

“Bellamy Blake: stubborn asshole across universes.”

“Like Clarke Griffin isn’t.”

She grins. “I never said I wasn’t. So, she dumped you.”

“We had a long conversation and decided it wasn’t right for us anymore.”

“She dumped you.”

“For six years, my whole world was just six people,” he says. “And they’re still—they’re my family now, the same as O, the same as you. We’re never going to stop caring about each other. But a relationship wasn’t right for me and her.”

Clarke pats his arm. “She dumped you.”

“Because she’s scared of my sister.”

“That’s rough, buddy.” 

“Buddy? Are you really calling me _buddy_? Do people say that here?”

“It’s a quote.”

They walk in silence for a bit, which is fine with him. There are so many people here, so much to see and to do. So much recreation.

“So, does the other Clarke have a chance?” she finally asks.

He pulls his attention away from a store that seems to only sell novelty socks. It doesn't seem like a viable business plan. “Hm?” 

“She’s in love with you.”

For a second, he can’t breathe. It feels absurd, but not, all at the same time. It’s not as if he doesn’t still—

This isn’t even his Clarke, and there’s still a part of him that loves her. Like he can’t meet any version of her and not get drawn in. If his Clarke is alive and he finds her again, he's pretty sure it won't take long.

“Did Madi tell you that?”

“My Bellamy. Madi said she called you every morning on her radio, though, and you never picked it up. She had me do it, just in case you could hear us.”

“Every day?”

“For six years.”

He probably would have done the same thing, if he’d known she was alive. Even if she never answered, he’d want to be able to tell her he tried.

“What did she tell your Bellamy?”

“She asked him to kiss her. In case you never could. So—I don’t know what kind of rebound rules you’ve got in the future, but you probably owe her one.”

It’s so much hope it’s almost choking him.

“Did he do it?" he asks. "Kiss her."

“Yeah.”

“Then I better do it too,” he says. “Wouldn’t want him to be the only one.”

*

“So, we still have the rest of the day,” says Clarke. They bought groceries for her and her Bellamy and some sandwiches to eat for lunch. Supermarkets are great; he wishes they had some. “Do you want to talk to dead people?”

“What?”

Her expression sobers. “I know there are people here who aren’t alive where you’re from. If there’s anyone you want to talk to—“

“Probably not,” he admits. “Not—I’m glad they’re alive, I’m just not sure what to say to them.”

“Yeah, I figured." She taps her jaw. "The other Clarke still does art, so you probably like all the Bellamy stuff too, right?”

“Depends. What’s the Bellamy stuff?”

“History, mythology, books—“

“Who doesn’t like books?” he grumbles, and she grins.

“Yeah, still Bellamy. We should go to a museum. You’ve never been that into American history, but you like the MFA.”

“You’re the expert,” he says. “Wherever you want to go.”

Even before they get to the museum, it’s kind of fascinating from a historical perspective. It's a decent trip to get there, a walk to the station, one train and then another, and the whole time they're surrounded by so many _people_ from so many different places, living so many different lives.

“Do you speak any other languages?" he asks Clarke, as he tries to eavesdrop on a conversation in what might be Korean.

"Not really. I took Spanish in high school, but I wasn't very good at it. You took Latin," she adds. "And still act like you remember way more than you do."

Why that's the detail that gets him, he doesn't know, but that's the last straw. "I can't believe this is your _life_ ," he tells her.

"I can't believe yours either," she shoots back, which is fair.

"Yeah, but yours is good."

"I know," she says, looking away from him. "I'm sorry about yours."

"It's getting better."

Clarke doesn't look particularly impressed. "Really?"

"We made it to the ground and I found my sister. Yeah, we've got another war brewing, but I think we're going to get better at not having wars, sooner or later." He swallows hard. "And you're alive, right? My Clarke is."

"Unless she died in the last two days."

"Fuck, don't say that."

"I don't think she did," says Clarke, with that particular kind of optimism only she has. "Whatever's happening to us--it's a gift, Bellamy. It might not fix your life like it fixed mine, but--I don't think it's going to ruin it either."

"Spoken like someone who didn't live through _two_ apocalypses."

"You only lived through one of them." She leans her head on his shoulder, this shock of contact. "You should find her."

He doesn't even know when he started believing he could. "Yeah," he says. "I should."

*

They spend a few hours wandering around the museum, which he really does love in all in universes. His favorite pieces of art are still his favorites, without Clarke even telling him. She takes him around to the areas they usually hit and he just gravitates toward them, making her grin every single time.

"It's just nice," she says. "That you're still you."

And he can admit that it is. It’s nice to know that in some other world, he could still be himself, still be recognizable to this other Clarke.

That they’d still find each other and love each other, even without wars and death and pain. They could be soft, too, and happy.

She offers a few options for dinner and he picks pizza, which feels like this legendary object, some holy grail. He never thought he'd get to eat it, and he's not letting this chance go.

“It’s all over pop culture from this time period,” he explains, when Clarke just frowns at him.

“You want to order pizza for academic reasons.”

“I’m curious. Sorry, do you not like pizza? You were the one who suggested it.”

“No, pizza’s great. It's just weird that you're so excited. We eat it like twice a month."

"So you know what I like."

They take the train back and Clarke gets the pizza online, their regular order populating automatically, another wonder. Here is a world where their routines don't involve talking about how to keep the most people alive or how to survive themselves, just getting the same pizza to eat in front of the TV every other week.

"Where did your Bellamy take my Clarke?" he asks her, as she navigates Netflix. "Any of your favorite places?"

"I don't think he really took her anywhere. She was just happy to see him. Which isn't a knock on you," she adds, just as he starts to feel bad. "If I woke up in bed with someone I thought had died six years ago, I would have freaked out too. Waking up in the rover with Madi was scary enough."

"And I wasn't alone like she was." The thought has been nagging at him, tugging at the corner of his mind. Clarke must have been so happy to see him, must have been so glad to see _everyone_. He'd gotten back almost all the people he lost as soon as he hit the ground, and Clarke still doesn't know any of that. 

Apparently she wasn't alone, but Bellamy knows how different being responsible for a child is from having a friend. He remembers wondering if it would just be him and Octavia for his whole life, because he could never trust anyone else with her. And even then, he still _had_ other people.

"I'm going to find her." It comes out like a promise, even though this Clarke can't hold him accountable, probably won't ever even know if he does it. He has to say it to someone.

She just rolls her eyes, fond. "I know. If you knew she was alive, you would have already."

He's not sure it's true; he might have gone to the bunker first anyway, to make sure he had allies, enough people to save her. But now that he does, and he knows she's on the other side of the wasteland--

Now that he knows that, all he has to do is get to her.

"I should be back tomorrow, right?"

"If it works the same way it did last time."

"Good."

"Good," she agrees. "Let's find something to watch."

*

The pizza is delicious and the movie is entertaining, but all he really wants to do is go to sleep and wake up back in his old world again tomorrow, to find out if they spent the day with some other Bellamy, if all these impossible things are somehow true, and there's another Clarke there waiting for him to come find her.

This Clarke makes him watch another movie instead.

"You're not even tired," she says. "You're going to be like a kid on Christmas Eve if you try to sleep now."

"We got rid of Christmas."

"You wont be able to sleep because you're too excited. We're going to stay up late and get exhausted and _then_ you can go to sleep."

"You're probably right," he admits, sighing and leaning back against the couch with his eyes closed. "Not that I'm not having fun hanging out with you, just--"

"Hey, I want you to get back too. You're cool, but I like my Bellamy better. He already knows what pizza is."

"Yeah, that's the most important thing." He clears his throat. "You guys are good, though, right?"

"Yeah. I know--we haven't been dating for that long, but we've been together for a while. It feels like it's going to last."

Even though he and his Clarke have been apart for so much longer than they were together, that makes sense to him. He's lost her so many times, and every time, he thinks this is the time he won't give her up again.

It hasn't been true yet, but it has to be sometime. Maybe this can be it.

By the time the second movie ends, he's actually feeling tired. The anticipation could still keep him up all night, but exhaustion should set in at some point. He'll be fine.

He really believes it, right up until Clarke says, "Are you going to sleep in your bed or mine?"

His brain shuts off for a second. "What?"

"My Bellamy and I are sleeping together, so--" She shrugs. "Your call, but I figured you might want a hug too."

"If I can't sleep, I'll keep you up."

"If you can't sleep, I'll tell you to go to sleep."

He smiles. "Then I could probably use a hug, yeah."

He kills as much time as he can in the bathroom, brushing his teeth, washing his face, stripping down to the underwear this Bellamy seems to favor to sleep in, but it doesn't help; he still walks into the room to find Clarke in the middle of changing, and he has to find somewhere else to look. Some version of him has obviously seen Clarke naked before--has had sex with her, even--but it's not _him_.

It's not her either, not really. She's lovely and familiar and he likes her, but he can spot the places on her body where there should be scars. It's just not the same.

"I'm decent," Clarke tells him, pulling his attention away from the photograph he was studying with far more scrutiny than it really required. "You can stop being weird."

"Thanks," he says, dry. His conscience gets the better of him, and he smiles. "But really, thanks. Today was--"

"Surreal?"

"Yeah. But it was good."

"Good." She cocks her head at him. "You don't want a kiss?"

He swallows hard. "I think I can wait."

The bed is just as warm and comfortable as it was this morning, but it's only a little less strange to be lying next to Clarke again. He feels like he's not supposed to be touching her, and knowing he's wrong doesn't make it any easier to cross the invisible barrier between the two of them.

She notices, of course, and rolls over right on top of him, throwing one of her legs over his and tucking her face under his chin. "You're supposed to be sleeping, not stressing."

"I can probably do both," he says, but he can already feel his body relaxing, melting into the bed. He likes having company when he sleeps; there isn't a single person he was on the Ark with he didn't spent a night cuddled with, even if he didn't have sex with most of them. It's just _nice_. And with his eyes closed, he can almost forget that this isn't his Clarke.

"Goodnight, Bellamy," she murmurs. "I hope I don't see you tomorrow."

He kisses her hair, just because he can. He doesn't need to wait for that. "Yeah. Can't wait to not see you."

*

The sun wakes him the next morning, and he wakes with packed earth under his back and a scratchy blanket draped over him, and he grins up at the cloudy sky.

He's home.

"Are you back?"

The relief of the question is instantaneous; not only is he home, but it was _real_. Echo wouldn't be asking that unless she'd met the other Bellamy yesterday.

Everything the other Clarke told him was true, and that means his Clarke is here somewhere. They can get to her.

He sits up and shakes out his shoulders, cracks his neck. Echo's sitting by the remains of a fire with her sword, presumably on the last guard shift of the night. They're not in their regular camp, and the new landscape is too uniformly barren for him to have much idea where they might be. It's a small group, too--Miller and Murphy are sleeping nearby, but he sees no sign of anyone else.

"It's me," he says. "Where are we?"

"On our way to Clarke."

His heart stops. "Do we know where she is?"

"Enough to start looking. She has a radio, if we're close enough we should be able to contact her. We've been trying every few hours, we should get a signal through soon."

"This might not be our best use of resources," he says. "I thought I'd be going alone."

Echo rolls her eyes. "You getting killed on a solo rescue mission would be an even worse use of resources. We can't leave her there," she adds. "Not again."

"Yeah." He goes to sit next to her. "How was he? The other Bellamy?"

"Like you, but softer." She looks at him sidelong. "I came because I assumed if you didn't, you'd think I was upset about it."

"Are you?"

"Of course not. I'm glad she's alive, and that you'll get her back." She smirks, just a little. "I dumped you, remember?"

He shakes his head, snorts softly. "That's what I hear. Thanks," he adds. "For coming along."

She shrugs. "I was getting antsy."

"Hey, look who's back," says Miller, sitting up himself. "Is it too late to trade you for the other one? I liked him better. He thought I was badass."

"I missed you too," says Bellamy. "You guys just went with the whole _alternate universe Bellamy_ thing? Really?"

"Your sister wanted to murder him for being a spy," says Murphy. "But what else is new?"

"He was pretty convincing," says Miller. "And, honestly, we all wanted to believe it."

Bellamy smiles, thinking of that bright other world where he and Clarke have just decided to start sharing a bed, and they could order pizza and fight about what to watch every night, if they wanted to. It's oddly comforting, just knowing it exists, that there's a whole universe full of light that he got to visit. That some other him gets to live in.

At the same time, there's also a Bellamy in the world who has gotten to kiss two different Clarke Griffins, and he has yet to kiss one. That hardly seems fair.

"Yeah, I get that," he tells Miller. "But I'm back and Clarke's somewhere in that valley, so--"

"So we've got shit to do," says Murphy.

"We've got shit to do," Bellamy agrees. "So let's go do it."


End file.
